Dave's Transformers Rant: Robot Enhanced Design wave 1 Megatron (G1) Soundwave (G1) Optimus Prime (G1) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/RED1 Robot Enhanced Design, or RED, is another attempt like the Robot Replicas subline to give screen-accurate robot modes and good articulation at the expense of an altmode, like improved Action Masters. They sort of fit into the Star Wars Black Series or Marvel Legends $20 action figure niche, but the Studio Series line already does that, making these a touch superfluous and late to the game...perhaps that's why they're Walmart exclusives, at least for now. Like Black Series, they avoid the Build-A- Figure gimmick, instead having multiple accessories and replacement hands. While this wave is all G1, wave 2 will have Arcee from TF: Prime and Beast Wars Cheetor. The line is technically Walmart exclusive in America, but doesn't mark itself as such on the box. CAPSULES $20 price point. Disclaimer on all the recommendations: this assumes you're even interested in a non-transforming action figure, and animation model faithfulness is a selling point at all. If your opinion is that a $20 Transformers toy had better be able to transform, then none of these is much above neutral...they're not going to change your mind about wanting what amounts to modern Action Masters without partners or vehicles. Megatron: Strange that there's so much focus on the left hand, and you'll want to check for better paint apps than I got, but this is otherwise a pretty good $20 action figure version of the G1 animation model. Recommended. Soundwave: I hope I got a bad copy, and that most of the problems mine had were not endemic to the mold. That said, it does have some poor design choices, and one weird color choice. Mildly recommended, assuming you can find one that's in better shape than mine. Optimus Prime: Has a similar thigh problem to Soundwave, but otherwise holds together better. Arm range of motion is hurt by animation fidelity in proportions. Obligatory Matrix is obligatory. Recommended, but slightly behind Megatron. RANTS Packaging: To further distinguish them from the rectangular solid Studio Series and the right trapezoid War for Cybertron series boxes, these are isoceles trapezoidal solids, with both left and right sloped inward. 8" (20cm) tall, 4.25" (10.5cm) wide in front, 6" (15cm) wide in back, and 2.5" (6cm) deep. If you got eight boxes, they'd fit reasonably well in an octagon shape. There's a plastic hook on top for peg hanging. Predictably, the boxes are predominantly red in front, with black side corners wrapping around to a mostly black back with some red bits. They have the Generations logo in the upper right, and a new R.E.D. logo along the top border, along with a warning that this is for children 8 and up. There's two windows, the front one shows the figure, while the right side (from the viewer's point of view, as the box is facing them) window shows the option parts and accessories. The lower left of the front and the left side has the faux-painted character art, with a visual gimmick that is both striking and probably not that well thought-out: the color is flaking and peeling off the figure and drifting off in jagged shards that also "wrap" to the right side. Why is this poorly thought-out? Because while these toys don't have chrome, the artistic choice is going to remind older collectors (who are the main market for these nostalgia toys) of chrome flaking. It's less obvious on Megatron, who has light gray flake away to reveal lighter gray, but it's pretty striking on the other two. Anyway, at the bottom of the front panel are the Transformers logo, the character name and faction symbol, and a small warning in four languages that this is a non-converting figure. The right border of the front is the usual Generations Transformers logo. The top has the outline classic logo, the bottom has legalese. The back of the box has a full body render to the left of the panel of the figure with one choice of option parts, then insets on the right showing off other options or giving closeups. And more legalese below, of course. The RED logo is along the left edge, the outline TF logo in the upper left, name and faction symbol in the upper right. Inside, there's two plastic trays each with its own cardstock backing that folds around and provides a border. The accessories tray is separate from the one with the main figure. The cardstock behind the figure's tray has a blueprint sort of outline (albeit in white on gray, not white on blue) of the figure inside as well as the accessories and some general design drawings of joints and the like. The card behind the accessories tray has the accessories part of the main image, and goes a little farther to the right with it, so you can overlap the two cards to get the complete image. The RED logo is found at the top of the main card. The usual multilingual warning sheet is folded up inside, but there's no instructions, the insets on the box back covering that duty to the extent it's needed. Option Parts: That's the name often given to spare hands or heads with different features in Japanese figures going back decades, it's a way to fake articulation a bit or allow changes in facial expression. All RED figures have multiple hands, some of which are designed to go along with other accessories. Unfortunately, none of them come with a storage solution other than "keep the original box," which means that if you don't want to be a box hoarder you need to find a way to not lose whichever parts aren't currently attached. (Too bad they couldn't have at least made the torsos open up to store the spare hands.) All of the hands share a common peg size, so in theory could be interchanged, as can the hand-replacement energy weapons. However, there's otherwise no attempt to make for common accessories...if you want someone else to hold Optimus's gun, they need to borrow the appropriate hand too. Soundwave's pegs are all different sizes. There's definitely an emphasis on "make it look like the show" rather than actual play. DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Assortment: E7836 Series: G1 Accessories: Left fist, open left hand, pointing left hand, left hand holding Energon cube, energy mace. Packaging: A pair of ties together across the waist of the robot, everything else held in by blister shape. The barrel on the back pokes through a hole in the blister, so you need to pull the legs out first. The renders on the package show more red on the inner part of the elbow joint than the toy has. Robot Mode: Packaged with a closed fist on the right hand and an open gripping hand on the left, not that he comes with anything to hold (it's soft plastic, so you can jam a 5mm peg in there if you want him to hold the pistol from Kingdom Core-Class Megatron). Mostly based on the simplified animation model, so we get things like the pistol hammer details on the shoulders replaced by nearly rectangular blocks. In fact, he's about as animation-accurate as you can get, considering that the animation itself wasn't incredibly consistent. So they had to pick and choose their specific influences, such as red on the sides of the abdomen which isn't always present in the animation model, or lighter gray panels on the sides of his boots that come and go. One place I think they went overboard with animation model fidelity was in the barrel openings on the fusion cannon and his over the shoulder gun barrel, which are basically plugged rather than having actual depth. For good and ill, it's G1 screen accurate. 5.75" (14.5cm) tall to the top of the head, 6" (15cm) to the top of the pistol barrel poking up on the back. The colors are mostly light and dark gray with a few splashes of other colors. Most of the toy is light gray plastic. The pelvis, hip flaps, boots, and ankles joints are dark gray plastic, as are most of the option hands, and the plastic pins on the double knee joints. The fusion cannon (which seems to be glued on) is black plastic. Oddly, the feet are a slightly darker light gray plastic. Thanks to the simplicity of animation color design, very little paint is actually needed. There's black details on the forehead and around the eyes, red for the eyes, abdomen sides, elbow joints, a little bit near the back end of the fusion cannon, and a rectangle on the abdomen front. There's two powder blue circles on the belly, and a yellow rectangle, just like in (most of) the animation models. The raised Decepticon symbol on the chest is painted purple. There's medium gray on the tops of the feet, and a light gray on the lower parts of the boots that matches the foot plastic. In fact, by total surface area, light gray is the main paint. The neck is a somewhat restricted ball joint in a collar, so it has decent range of tilting without there being a major gap between torso and head. The waist has a swivel that pops into place via spring or something like it when pointed forwards or completely backwards, and there's a hinge in the abdomen so he can bend forwards at the abdomen (ratcheting with three positions). The back details prevent him from leaning backwards on this joint, though. The shoulders lift up to the sides on hinges, and then have swivels at the ends of the shoulder struts. There's smooth swivels just above the soft-ratcheting (30 degrees at a time between straight and right angle) elbows. The wrists are universal joints, but sunk into sockets that don't let them bend much. However, the posts used for hand replacement have a "one click out" position that frees the wrists up for more extreme poses while remaining securely in the sockets. Ball joint hips, with the hip flaps on hinges to get out of the way. Upper thigh swivels, and soft-ratcheting double-hinge knees that let the legs bend completely double, allowing for kneeling poses that feel more natural than usual for toys. The ankles are severely restructed ball joints that barely let the foot wiggle around, but like the wrists they can be extended to allow for greater range of motion. Unlike the wrists, the ankles don't pop out entirely. The wrists and ankles are the most Revoltech-like joints in this figure. There are 3mm sockets on the bottoms of both feet, making them compatible with certain types of figure stand. There's no pelvis socket for flight stands, though. Technically, the option part pegs will fit into 3mm sockets, but that just looks weird. When picking it up and shaking it lightly, the waist wobbles a bit, but otherwise it feels nicely solid. Accessories and Option Parts: As noted in the summary at the top, a bunch of replacement left hands, but the only thing for the right hand is his energy ball and chain seen in More than Meets the Eye part 2 and never again (not that only showing up once keeps G1-based toys from having accessories over and over). All of the optional left hands have the same wrist articulation as the one that comes attached to the figure. The "energy mace" is a single piece of clear purple plastic (strong UV glow) that's flexible but not floppy, it only sags slightly under its own weight. The plug part is pale warm lavender plastic, but it's just a plug and has no hinge joint like the wrists do. When plugged in, it extends 4.25" (10.5cm) past the end of the forearm. Most of the joints are stiff enough to support is weight, but the swivel above the elbow isn't. One of the optional left hands is a fist that is basically a mirror of the right hand. There's also one that's open and relaxed, an accusing pointing finger (OBJECTION!), and then the other energon accessory, a hand holding an energon cube. Oddly, rather than molding a gray hand and a purple cube and gluing them together, the hand is part of the mold for one section of the cube, which was cast in two pieces (five-sided piece, and then a plug that fills in the sixth side. The wrist peg is still gray plastic, but the hand part is painted over in dark gray...and at least on mine, the paint gets into the cube, looking like an aura of gray around the fingers. The cube itself is hollow, but the walls are thick enough that it has almost no give. It's about 3/4" (18mm) on a side, and not a perfect cube, the plugged side flares out a bit. A pity they didn't have the budget to go for option heads or faces, so the neutral/serious expression could be replaced by a greedy leer while holding the energon cube, or a snarl while armed with the energon mace. Overall: While not quite as flexible and customizable as the old Revoltech figure, it has a good assortment of parts and almost too good of an adherence to on-screen accuracy. You might want to check all the ones on the shelf before buying to see if any of them have better paint on the energon cube hand, though. DECEPTICON: SOUNDWAVE Assortment: E7838 Series: G1 Accessories: Rifle, left rifle-holding hand, right button-pushing hand, Buzzsaw cassette Packaging: A pair of ties waist, everything else held in by blister shape. There's a rubber band around the upper torso to keep the chest door from opening. Package renders show Buzzsaw as more of a standard red, instead of the neon shade used on the toy. Robot Mode: Another "as accurate as it can be" mold (including the slightly too short arms), although I wonder if the people doing the colors were watching a copy of the cartoon with weird saturation...the grays are a little too dark, and the golden yellow comes off as more of an orange-yellow. The chest door is too dark, but that's because they went for clear plastic and they neglected to paint the interior to make the empty chest look lighter. It comes with the shoulder launcher attached, and both default hands are closed fists. There's no paint on the launcher, but to be fair, the cartoon usually left off the red stripe as well. Mine has lots of bad joints. The waist and the lifting-up hinge on the the left shoulder almost felt like they were going to break before turning properly, like paint-lock but with no paint. The left thigh swivel refuses to stay flush and leaves a big gap in the thigh, and the chest door falls ajar under its own weight. There's no springs or latches, so the tape deck button stays pushed down. To add insult to injury, none of the pegs holding things together have good tolerances, so the launcher is easily popped off and the backpack only barely stays on. I may have just hit the 00 slot in QC Roulette, but I suspect there's some engineering issues underlying at least some of these problems. Just shy of 6" (15cm) tall, in mostly dark blue and light gray with accents in red and yellow-orange. Light gray plastic is used for the forearms, hips, thighs, tape door button, and the pins through the elbow hinges. The tape door itself is clear light blue plastic, the feet and ankle joints are more of a medium gray plastic. Everything else is darkish blue plastic. There's light gray paint (good shade match, but the surface texture is a bit different) on the faceplate and helmet sides, tape buttons on the belt, kneecaps, and the muzzle of the rifle. Looking to the back, there's tuning dial and band switching tab with light gray paint on them. Bright red paint is used on the optics, stripes around the wrist area, two stripes near the end of the cylindrical part of the gun, and on a rectangle on top of the rear segment of the gun. There's no paint on the shoulder launcher. A yellow-orange paint that does a very bad job of looking gold is used for the tape door border and the shin vents. A purple Decepticon symbol is printed (and molded) on the center of the tape door. The neck is a double ball joint, with the head surrounding a large sphere and a smaller ball at the end of the strut going into the collar as on Megatron. The waist is a smooth swivel, no bending-over joint. The shoulders are universal joints (swivel at torso, hinge in shoulderpad), there's smooth upper arm swivels and double hinge elbows. The wrists work the same way as on Megatron. Ball joint hips, upper thigh swivels, double hinge knees (can't quite bend 180 degrees), and the same sort of ankle as Megatron has. The chest door is hinged to swing open, but has no latch. Inside are two narrow posts to hold the tape steady, but they are deliberately loose fits, as there's no ejection mechanism to speak of...pressing the button pushes the tape out maybe a couple millimeters, but not enough to grab onto. The shoulder launcher itself is an unpainted piece of darkish blue plastic (slightly flexible) 1.5" (4cm) long and resembling a AAA battery with a missile rack inside. Annoyingly, it attaches with a peg that is 3/16" (slightly under 5mm) wide and rather short. So, not only does it not stay in place very well, you can't swap it out for something with a longer 5mm peg. The backpack is detachable for reasons that elude me, attaching via two pegs, neither of which is 5mm or 3mm. The bigger peg is a little over 3/16" but a little under 5mm, so nothing else stays in it. At least Megatron could pretend to some cross-compatibility with other toy lines, this one isn't even compatible with itself. Accessories and Option Parts: At first glance, both of the option hands look the same, but while the right hand is open enough to hold the rifle grip, the non-index fingers of the left hand are tucked in tight. This is not an alternate gun-hand, instead it's intended to let you show Soundwave pushing his tape release button, and thanks to the double hinge elbow and universal joint shoulder this is possible. Joints and plastics are the same as the default fists. Laserbeak is a single chunk of black plastic with paint on it. It has just enough molded detail to give the impression it has moving parts, though. It has paint in light gray, medium graym and a sort of neon red to further enhance the resemblance to G1 Laserbeak in tape mode, and two small holes that are a little narrower than 3mm, but the plastic is flexible enough to let a 3mm peg or stud jam in there. Thus, at least this accessory could be shared with a Generations Soundwave of recent vintage, although it's only 1" (2.5mm) wide, a bit over half an inch (1.5cm) tall, and 4mm thick, so it would look more like a badge than a minion. The gun looks pretty good, your basic stretched out battery with a missile stuck on the end from G1, although the not-a-missile part is painted light gray rather than chromed. The whole thing is a single chunk of somewhat flexible blue plastic, and it has a pistol grip with a big sort-of- trigger. The bottom end of the grip is a rectangle 7mm by 3mm, so not really usably by anything designed to hold pegs. The whole thing is just under 3" long (a little over 7cm), and the muzzle end is 3.6mm wide...you might be able to get some of the more flexible Fire Blasts to stay on. Overall: Kinda disappointing, although if I just got unlucky on quality control, the only really bad design elements are the chest door and the too short peg on the shoulder launcher. The utter contempt for peg compatibility is a bit jarring after years of Hasbro being pretty good about that, though. AUTOBOT: OPTIMUS PRIME Assortment: E7845 Series: G1 Accessories: Pointing right hand, rifle-holding right hand, partly open right and left hands for holding Matrix, rifle, energy axe, Matrix Packaging: A double tie across the waist, everything else held in by blister shape. A rubber band holds his chest windows closed. The package renders show the Autobot symbol on the shoulder with a white border around it, but the actual toy just has light gray interior lines on the molded symbol with no border. There's no call-out showing the Matrix being held, I'm guessing about the purpose of those partly open hands. Robot Mode: Like my Soundwave, there's a gap in one of the thighs where the swivel didn't get assembled correctly. And like Soundwave. the arms feel too short but are on-model in that respect. (They're only a little short, the shins are just super long and it makes the whole thing look off.) Otherwise, it's pretty much as dead-on to the animation model from G1 as it's possible to get given how the animation wasn't always consistent. The lone concession to being toyetic is, like Soundwave, having a clear chest. 6" (15cm) tall and in the usual Optimus colors. Soft dark blue plastic is used for the head, boots and feet, and I think might be used for the smokestacks on the shoulders. The fists seem to be a slightly more rigid dark blue plastic, as are the wrist pegs/joints, the hip struts, and the knee joint pins. The chest windows are clear very light blue plastic. The rest of the upper body and arms is made of dark red plastic, although I think a few bits (like the shoulders) are soft plastic rather than rigid. The pelvis, thighs, and knees are white plastic. There's light gray plastic standing in for silver on the face, forehead tablet, smokestacks, leg fuel tanks, toe tips, mid-torso stripes, the interior of the open chest cavity, and the borders between raised bits on the molded Autobot symbol on the left shoulder. The borders of the chest windows are painted red in a good match to the plastic (but obviously different under UV). The eyes are light blue, the belt details are painted yellow, the front and back of the lower pelvis are painted dark blue, and for some reason the abdomen grill is actually metallic silver rather than gray or white standing in for silver. So, a bit of a departure from the animation model there. While the forearm arrows are molded, they're not painted. Very similar articulation to the other two. The neck is a double ball joint (the neck itself is a short dumbbell shape with sockets in the head and upper torso, with a collar around it). The shoulders are universal joints, with cutouts in the upper torso to make room for the shoulders to raise up all the way. The biceps swivels do result in the upper arm rubbing against the lower end of the smokestacks. Hinge elbows, and the wrists work the same way as on the other two (to the point that you could swap hands if you wanted, although I think Megatron's might look too big on Prime). The chest doors swing open, although it's hard to get them to do so without long nails or a knife, and the waist swivels smoothly. Ball joint hips, mid-thigh swivels, double hinge knees, and the RED-standard ankle joints. Pretty good range of motion, as shown by the following picture (which uses the open hands parts): http://www.dvandom.com/images/REDoptimus.JPG Accessories and Option Parts: Obviously, if Megatron's getting his energy flail, Optimus has to get the axe, which is a single piece of clear orange plastic with a red plastic peg that can plug into either wrist. Unlike the flail, it has a hinged peg, giving it a proper wrist. Total length 2.25" (6cm), but only 2" (5cm) sticks out from the forearm. Where Megatron is all about being sinister with optional left hands, Optimus has mostly replacement right hands. He has a finger-pointing right hand appropriate for the Delbo Point, and a right hand designed to hold his rifle. He also has a pair of open hands, which can sort of cradle the Matrix, but are not designed to hold it securely. In theory the open left hand can be placed under the rifle barrel for a two-handed grip, but in practice it's hard to keep the arms crossed over the chest enough for the hand to stay in place. The rifle is a single piece of black plastic 2.75" (7cm) long with gray paint on the vents at the stock end. It takes a fair amount of twisting and force to get it into the appropriate hand, but the trigger finger does go into the trigger guard. Unfortunately, he can't point while holding the rifle, since both of those are the same side (I guess he could do a Bil the Galactic Hero and install two right hands). The Matrix is a 17mm wide piece of light gray plastic painted golden yellow and light blue, the same front and back. The handles are so small you can't even stick one of Prime's fingers into the gap, it's really just meant to go into the chest and occasionally fall out because there's no peg to secure it. When the doors open, the Matrix falls out. It does sort of wedge into its slot, but it doesn't always stay there. Overall: It's decent, but does suffer from being held to animation proportions (mainly the arms). Dave Van Domelen, now back to reviewing Transformers that transform.